Courses

Note to students: Starting Fall 2019, our undergraduate courses will be grouped under: First Year; Foundational; Thematic Clusters (Politics & Policy, Formations & Practices, Media & Aestethics); and Capstone & 400-level Electives. Please make sure to review the information page for the new program requirements for Specialist, Major, and Minor programs here. Students enrolled in any SDS program before 2019 have the option of switching to the 2019 program requirements, or fulfilling the existing requirements for the year in which they enrolled. For further inquiries or questions concerning course substitutions, please contact the SDS program office at sexual.diversity@utoronto.ca.

FIRST YEAR

This First-Year Foundations seminar will explore sexuality at the intersections of race, gender, class, disability, citizenship status, and geography, among other social relations and processes as a foundational practice in Sexual Diversity Studies. In an intimate seminar setting, students will develop reading, writing, and presentation skills necessary for engaging in Sexual Diversity Studies across a wide array of disciplinary traditions.

Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

FOUNDATIONAL COURSES

An interdisciplinary examination of sexuality across cultures and periods. How are sexualities represented? How are they suppressed or celebrated? How and why are they labeled as straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, or perverse? How do sexualities change with race/ethnicity, class, gender, and geographies?

This course examines a variety of methodological approaches used in humanities and humanist social sciences concerning sexuality and gendered diversity. Students will explore some of the popular methods in sexuality studies including ethnography, archival research, visual cultural studies, oral history, and media and discourse analysis.

This course introduces students to key theories of sexuality and sexual diversity. The main goal is to create a framework for understanding sexuality at its intersections with race, gender, class, disability, citizenship status, and geography among other social relations and processes at an advanced level. Closely tracing sexuality’s intersections, course readings will draw upon critical race theory, postcolonial critique and decolonizing movements, women of colour feminisms, trans studies, and transnational sexuality and gender studies.

Prerequisite: SDS255H1 or SDS256H1
Exclusion: UNI355H1
Recommended Preparation: Some coursework in intersectionality of gender or sexuality.

THEMATIC CLUSTERS

[Politics & Policy]

A critical examination of the HIV/AIDS global pandemic from a multidisciplinary perspective and with an emphasis on sexuality. The course examines the basic biology of HIV/AIDS and then covers social, historical, political, cultural, gender, and public health aspects of HIV/AIDS. Attention is given to the distinct features of vulnerable and marginalized populations, prevention, treatment, drug development, and access to medicines.

SDS345H1FSex and the Epidemic (Instructor: David Brennan)Tuesday 14:00-17:00

HIV has forever changed the way human beings understand sexuality. Through a social justice lens, this course examines the nature of community norms, laws, popular media, and the academy to explore how the epidemic has impacted the provision of social services in relation to the diversity of human sexuality.

The course explores the legal regulation of sexuality. How does law understand, constitute and regulate sex, sexuality and sexual diversity? It will consider the role of different types of regulation, including criminal law, family law and constitutional law, and explore issues ranging from sex work and pornography to same sex marriage to transgender discrimination.

Experiences of queer youth are explored in various education settings through academic research, personal essays, and visual and performing arts to investigate how queer youth define themselves, what they are learning, the curriculum and pedagogy used in the learning process and the possibilities of said learning for social change, individual and community well-being.

Explores the role of sports and wellness programs in promoting or impeding social inclusion, as well as their role in community building among sexual minorities. It will consider the ways that sexuality has been framed or regulated in sports, as well as the challenges to such limits from among athletes, LGBT activists, and others.

This is an interdisciplinary course examining the development of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) movement and its interaction with the state in the US and Canada. (Given by the Department of Political Science and the Sexual Diversity Studies Program)

Prerequisite: SDS255H1/ SDS256H1/ UNI255H1/ UNI256H1/ one full course on the politics of 20th century Europe, U.S., or Canada/one full course on gender or sexuality/permission of the instructor.
Exclusion: JPU315H1

JPS378H1FSex and the State (Instructor: Julie Moreau)
Wednesday 12:00-14:00

What role have sex and sexuality played in the formation of the modern nation state? How has the state regulated sex? This course explores these questions with a theoretical focus on biopolitics. We will proceed in two parts. First, we engage Foucault’s History of Sexuality and its reception by postcolonial theorists, focusing on questions of state building. The second part of the course shifts examination from state formation to contemporary forms of sexual regulation by the state. This includes maintenance of the public/private divide, citizenship law and nationalism, administrative violence and the prison industrial complex, and neoliberalism and BDSM. By the end of the course, students are able to apply core theoretical concepts and identify forms of contemporary sexual regulation in a variety of Western and non-Western contexts. (Given by the Department of Political Science and the Mark S Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies).

How is the idea of “ethics” understood and deployed in research on sexuality and health? What are the ways that discourses of “risk,” “precarity,” and “cure” become regulative frameworks? How do racialization, colonialism and nation-­building participate in the biopolitics of sexuality and health? With these questions in mind, this interdisciplinary course will discuss various scholarly and activist literatures, including Youth Studies, Critical Disability Studies, Environmental Justice scholarship, Sex Education and Public Health Research, Critical Development Studies, and Queer and Feminist Studies to explore the cultural, social and political dimensions of ethics, health, and sexuality historically, and at the present moment.

[Formations & Practices]

This multidisciplinary course examines multiple lesbian identities that have varied in time and place. The course will pose such questions as: What does lesbian mean? Why have changes occurred in meaning? How has the identity of lesbian been culturally represented and politically expressed in various social and political contexts? It will also take up contemporary theoretical, cultural, and political understandings of lesbianism.

An exploration of LGBTQ rights and changes in social and cultural responses to sexual diversity in varied regional, national, and cultural contexts, potentially including Africa, Latin America, South and East Asia, and Eastern Europe. The role of transnational linkages and networks will also be considered in effecting change.

This course examines current and historical transgender issues by exploring legal and health care issues, politics, mainstream and other media representations (including films, interviews, and other genres), as well as current and historical advocacy and community work in relation to power structures such as the nation-state, race, disability, and sexuality.

Prerequisite: Completion of one 0.5 FCE from SDS, WGS or EQS courses or permission of the instructor.
Exclusion: SDS375H1F (Fall 2016).

This course examines the intersections between race, gender and sexuality through an exploration of the political theories, activisms and cultural forms of LGBTQ people of colour. It will study the emergence of queer of colour theory and critiques, examine its roots in women of colour feminism and investigate the ways in which the intersections of race, gender and sexuality figure in national, global, economic, and cultural structures.

This upper level course introduces students to questions of gender, sexuality, two-spirit, and same-sex desire at the intersections of race, indigeneity, and the violences of settler colonialism. Students will engage with work by scholars, activists, and artists in the fields of indigenous and queer studies, decolonizing activism, and cultural production.

An interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to the study of disability and sexuality. Students will engage with historical, mainstream and critical discourses and explore complex issues and representations pertaining to disability, sexuality, sexual practices and desire. Draws from a range of writings and cultural texts in queer, crip and sexuality studies.

This interdisciplinary course will explore the politics of migration and border-crossing from queer, feminist, and trans perspectives. Drawing upon contemporary North American and transnational research, students will engage with critical literatures on citizenship and the state, mobility, belonging, and kinship and how these processes intersect with sexuality in the context of immigration and refugee systems.

This course introduces students to Trans Studies as an emerging interdisciplinary field of scholarship from various angles: academic, activist, socio-historical, and clinical. Students will develop their abilities to assess representations of trans and intersexed people and social issues, taking into account how race, citizenship, gender, sexuality, culture and dis/ability are materially and socially constructed together to give meaning to the category trans.

This course focuses on Canadian literary and artistic productions that challenge prevailing notions of nationality and sexuality, exploring not only how artists struggle with that ongoing Canadian thematic of being and belonging, but also how they celebrate pleasure and desire as a way of imagining and articulating an alternative national politics.

This introductory course examines the critical relationship between popular culture and queer sexualities in historical and contemporary contexts. The course will draw upon literature from performance studies, media studies, and queer of colour cultural productions. Students will engage with a range of queer public cultures and arts, including drag performance, queer musics, social media networks, and popular media.

This course explores the history, culture, and aesthetics of sexual representations. Is there a difference between erotica and pornography? How do debates about artistic merit and censorship relate to larger issues of power, capitalism, and technology? How are sexual desires and identities increasingly shaped around those sexual representations?

This course explores, through queer of colour critique, feminist and queer theories, how sexuality, gender, and race are performed and heard in several popular music styles/genres. Sampling the field with readings, music videos and audio recordings, we examine sexuality, gender and race in music performance and reception currently and historically.

CAPSTONE & 400-LEVEL ELECTIVES

A capstone for SDS specialists (and majors) who will work closely with SDS faculty in developing their own research project while participating in this seminar and learning about key debates, methodologies, and ethical issues in conducting research in SDS. Students will learn to write proposals, ethics reviews, grants and other relevant documents. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

A service learning course with student placements in various LGBT community organizations alongside regular classroom seminars to look at the politics of engagement, active citizenship, mobilization, archiving community histories, accessibility, belonging, activism, and philanthropy. Only students in the specialist or major programs in Sexuality Diversity Studies can enrol in this course.

Prerequisite: SDS255H1/ SDS256H1 ( UNI255H1/ UNI256H1) and at least 1 FCE in SDS at the third-year level or permission of the instructor.
Exclusion: SDS456Y1: Special Topics: Engaging our Communities (2015-16)

Important Note: Placement selection and matching will occur over the summer; students are encourage to inform the instructor of their intention to enrol in this course by the end of June. We cannot guarantee a placement for students who enrol in late summer or after the term has started.

This course will provide an advanced exploration of the historical and contemporary formations and debates of queer theory. The specific theme of the seminar changes per year.

This year’s theme:Sexing South Asia: Bodies, Desires, and Sexualities
What happens when we center South Asia to think about alternative histories of sexualities, theories, and genealogies as we move across geopolitical and geographic boundaries? In this course, we take up the journeys of queer, trans/gender, hijra, khwaja sira, moorat, sakhi, and gender nonconforming within and beyond the dominant formations in area studies and postcolonial theory of South Asia. To study the relationships between gender, sexuality, and power, we will explore how bodies, desires, practices, identities, labor, and affect are being mediated by the state, social media, sacredness, and transnational securitization. Centering literary, visual, and performing arts as well as law, policy, economics and religion, we will study South Asian sexual histories not as an exception to the rule but rather a way to think about sexual rules, regulations and relationalities differently.

A research essay under the supervision of a faculty member with knowledge of sexual diversity, the proposal, and supervisor subject to the approval of the SDS Program Director.

Prerequisite: SDS255H1, SDS256H1

*Policy on SDS Independent Studies Courses (updated August 15, 2018)
You must be: a) a University College student; or b) an SDS Specialist, Major or Minor, to take this course. Students are allowed no more than 1.0 FCEs in Independent Studies. Students must have maintained a GPA of A- or higher and Undergraduate Director’s approval of the project is required. If you are interested in enrolling in SDS458H/SDS459Y, please fill out the form available here and submit it to sexual.diversity@utoronto.ca. Please note that it is your responsibility to find an appropriate SDS supervisor for your independent study prior to submission of the form

A major research essay prepared over the course of two academic terms (one year); under the supervision of a faculty member with knowledge of sexual diversity; the proposal and supervisor subject to the approval of the SDS Program Director.

Prerequisite: SDS255H, SDS256H

*Policy on SDS Independent Studies Courses (updated August 15, 2018)
You must be: a) a University College student; or b) an SDS Specialist, Major or Minor, to take this course. Students are allowed no more than 1.0 FCEs in Independent Studies. Students must have maintained a GPA of A- or higher and Undergraduate Director’s approval of the project is required. If you are interested in enrolling in SDS458H/SDS459Y, please fill out the form available here and submit it to sexual.diversity@utoronto.ca. Please note that it is your responsibility to find an appropriate SDS supervisor for your independent study prior to submission of the form.